Stopping Automated Calls to Your Home or Wireless Phone

Tuesday, 28 March 2017 12:23

You are getting unwanted auto-dial or automated phone calls to your home, VoIP or wireless phones and you’ve decided enough is enough. Well, you’ve come to the right place. Here’s an easy 5-step program that will help you block those irritating automated calls. If you take all five steps, it’ll require about 15-20 minutes of your time — a worthwhile investment that will restore some communications peace to your life.

STEP ONE

Register your phone numbers with the National Do Not Call Registry. It’s quick, easy and quite effective. If you have a few extra minutes, we encourage you to notify the FTC about the calls you received. It’ll take about a minute and it allows the FTC to add the robocall phone numbers to its large database so that the calls will be blocked by phone companies and phone blocking apps.

STEP TWO

If you are getting calls to your VoIP, landline or Apple phone, check out Nomorobo. It offers free robocall-blocking for most landline carriers and charges $1.99 per month for the same blocking to Apple wireless phones.

STEP THREE

If you want to get free robocall blocking for your wireless phone, check out some of the free apps that are available. We have used Call Control – Call Blocker and it works quite well. Plus it’s easy to set up.

STEP FOUR

Alert others to any unwanted automated calls that you receive. There are a number of websites that list spam calls. We like 800notes, as it is easy to use and seems to be one of the more popular robocall-warming websites. But there are a number of other call-blocking Android apps listed at the CTIA Wireless website.

STEP FIVE

If you have landline phone service from Verizon and/or AT&T, you can contact them and ask for automated call blocking. They should offer you this for free if you’ve receiving harassing calls. You should also explore digital robocall blocker devices. Consumer Reports rated them in 2015 and the Digitone Call Blocker seemed to rate the highest. It’s available at Amazon for about $90.

STEP SIX

Redirect your calls to a third-party company. Among the most clever is the Jolly Roger Telephone Company. It’s a rather ingenious concept: when you get a call from a telemarketer you simply forward the call to the Jolly Roger phone number and they take it from there. If revenge is sweet, then this service is sugar-plus. They have automated systems that keep the telemarketers on the phone for minutes or hours by pretending to be you. They record the call and then send it to you via email so that you can hear the telemarketer struggle to figure out WTF is going on. For a fairly nominal fee, it is not only sending a message to telemarketers, but it’s even a source of entertainment…..albeit a perverse one.

These six steps should go a long way towards eliminating automated calls. In the event that the unwanted calls are coming from a telemarketer or debt collection company, you may be in a position to sue these companies and reap some significant damages. Check out some of your legal options at Class Action and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. This bureau is a consumer protection star that President Trump and the Republican Congress wants to eliminate. Hopefully, they’ll fail. So long as this important protection agency exists, we encourage you use it to report any robocalling by a debt collector.

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